new customer?

[athegn1]

I am currently with Virgin Mobile. Virgin have recently switched from EE to O2 for mobile. Last weekend I had my first chance to test my mobile O2 signal away from home. Very bad in Durham, Hartlepool and A(1)M Could only get a signal by rebooting my phone. On Tuesday I had a number of problems in Epping Forest and Yesterday similar in Newport Essex.

So want to change back to EE.

Would the fact that until Virgin switched me over to O2, no choice, mean I am a completely new customer to EE or will my EE use, via Virgin count?

When I try to switch to EE, from Virgin, who handles the transfer e.g.I must keep my old mobile number. Does this mean I have to get a PAC number from Virgin or does EE do that?

Any advice please?

[bristolian]

Think I saw your post on the VM forum, your experience comes as no surprise sadly.

You are a new customer to EE - the fact that you indirectly used their network via an MVNO previously, is immaterial. When using EE's network, you were a Virgin Mobile customer.

You need to request a PAC from Virgin/O2 and give it to EE. That serves to authorise EE to port your number in, and for VM/O2 to close your mobile account.

[hisamuran]

Indeed, I agree with bristolian.

Mobile Virtual Network Operators are just unreliable, my advice is stick to the "full sized ones", EE, of course 🙂

I had really bad experience before with GiffGaff (signal was a joke inside any cafe, even in central London). GiffGaff use O2 too, guessing now Virgin Mobile is just as bad as GiffGaff then, good to know.

[bristolian]

In fairness, Virgin Mobile is moving away from an MVNO model into a full-service re-badged O2 with multibuy discounts, that's a different setup to GiffGaff.

[hisamuran]

Rebadged, that means with the same speed and signal as a normal O2? There has to be a catch somewhere surely 

[garetc]

It's not really a 're-badge' Virgin Media and O2 have merged to form a single company. Part of this is to move customers over from the Virgin MVNO platform to be 'full' O2 customers. They're being very generous with the new allowances those customers are getting doubling or giving users unlimited data in some cases.

There's long been rumours that O2 throttle the speed of their MVNO customers but no one has ever been able to provide any proof of this aside from anecdotal evidence. I guess it depends on the agreement that O2 have with the people paying to access their network. I think somewhere on the GiffGaff forum it's acknowledged during 'busy periods' their customers might experience a lesser service (throttling). I've certainly seen friends on Tesco Mobile and GiffGaff experience poor speeds and call quality on the same mast when my (now old) work O2 line has been perfectly usable.

Rumour is that the priority is set something along the lines of the below

1. Pay Monthly O2
2. Pay as you go O2
3. Tesco owned MVNO (Tesco/GiffGaff
4. Other MVNOs

O2's network in many areas is completely overloaded and struggles to cope. Largely because their numbers are comparable with EE but they have less spectrum to deploy, even when they have invested in more they're not great at deploying. Possibly because of cost and the fact Telefonica have been using O2 to prop up their debt in their homes market. 

For me EE is still the fastest all round network and has the best blanket coverage but things change!

Vodafone and Three potentially merging could knock EE off the top spot! 😀

[EssexBoyEE]

@athegn1 wrote -  I am currently with Virgin Mobile. Virgin have recently switched from EE to O2 for mobile

Actually Virgin Mobile parted company with EE quite a few years ago (4G Only) they tied a deal with Vodafone and offered Unlimited Speed on both 4G and 5G and it was launched as the New Virgin Mobile 5G Offering, All Virgin Mobile Customers were eventually moved of across to Vodafone, since then VM and O2 merged and VM moved Customers over from Vodafone to O2 around May last year and completed the Vodafone withdrawal by the end of 2022, interestingly this could all be do able and completed without any Sim Upgrading from the early VM / EE Network Days, so unless you managed to hang for dear life to the Vodafone Network you would have using the O2 Network for a while now, the current move which is still ongoing is All VM Customers will have thier Mobile Contracts transfered over to O2 for direct billing, again no Sim Change required for this.